Now, markets aren't always zero-sum. But they are often competitive.

> When I write better code today than I did yesterday, you, my teammate, will be happier, not sadder.

That's also true in football...

This is a huge problem for Windows and Mac.

For example go to Reddit or Facebook, start entering text, the notification permission dialog will appear, steal focus, and now your key-presses go into a black hole.

The whole concept of focus-theft is an anti-pattern. Interestingly one mobile operating systems originally designed out but has slowly been creeping back in.

I removed it from my panel just so I'd stop waiting for these if I misclicked it.

This strikes me as the main problem with the mindset around HSR. Consider e.g., Madison, Wisconsin.

Milwaukee would have a much more vibrant and dynamic ecosystem if undergrads/PhD students/professors could get to/from meetings with investors in MLK/CHI and be back for afternoon classes. Or continue internships/meetings during the school year.

There are enormous inefficiencies (and corresponding brain drain) caused by the fact that the region's center of innovation is 1+ hours by car away from the region's center of finance.

An MLK <-> CHI <-> Madison rail line would change the dynamics of the entire state's economy. Simply counting cars on the roads between those cities in the present ignores how HSR changes the entire dynamic in a very qualitative way.

...sure. But also, once you build a 5+ million person metro area you're pretty committed to it...

NYC, LA, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Washington DC, Miami, Philadelphia, and Atlanta.

You could profitably run high-speed rail between NYC and DC, hitting Philadelphia on the way. Amtrak does run a sort of high speed service on this route.

There's a study underway for a privately funded high-speed rail connecting Dallas and Houston.

Miami to Atlanta is at the edge of what might make sense.

Sizable metro areas can decline, Detroit is now 1/3 the size that it was at its peak in the 1960s. The railway station was abandoned.

https://ebow.org/artwork/470141-The-Great-Hall.html

I can't think of a single case where there would be an "obvious" replacement for that person -- not just in the US, but anywhere in the world. In fact, most of those H1Bs I've worked with eventually end up switching to the O1 anyways (for reference, very few SWEs -- even at FAANGs -- would quality for the O1).

Electrified rail is a viable alternative to suburb <-> urban center commutes. Similar/better travel times are possible.

And in both cases rail is much more pleasant. E.g., ICE trains are way nicer airplanes -- anyone who thinks otherwise has never been on an ICE train or really enjoys being punished.

I also prefer DB trains to being a passenger in a car on an interstate. Trains, when well-done, are much quieter, a much smoother ride, have much more comfortable seats, and offer the option to stand up and stretch if you feel like it.

Cycling is never a replacement for either of those two use cases.

It's a viable alternative to short-haul flights. Boston to Las Vegas, San Diego, San Francisco, or Seattle is not really competitive by rail, even if the US had any high-speed rail.

Even for frequent fliers, the TSA is pretty far down on any rational list of complaints about government. I fly almost every week, but in the past 12 months I have probably spent a lot more time at city hall on a stupid residential parking permit than I did in (non-customs) airport security lines.

In addition to personality, a lot of people project much larger political ideologies onto the TSA. You see a lot of that even in this comment section.

Only if focusing exclusively on direct interactions.

From an ideological perspective, I don't think it's projection (your wording) to observe that in their current form they align closely with both general government authoritarianism and the exercise of federal power over the states.

From a pragmatic perspective, I think it's perfectly reasonable to be alarmed about how such security measures seem to normalize invasive government behaviors in general. Societal norms and values aren't static, so how we do things in the present can and does affect how the public views things in the future.

First, the graphs for "manufacturing less computers" out form a more-or-less flat line. However, employment in "manufacturing less computers" declined precipitously. Even if we zero out the effect of computers and chips on manufacturing output, we still see constant output with precipitous decline in employment. Note that we see this even in countries that don't manufacture microchips.

Automation clearly is effecting manufacturing employment in manufacturing outside of chip fabs. That's patently obvious even from the graphs purportedly used to prove the opposite.

Second, the IT revolution is/was real. Most of America's largest companies are built on the back of silicon and the chips powering those market cpas were manufactured in highly automated factories. So, even setting aside (1), it's still clear that automation caused a decline in manufacturing employment. If chip fabs had required as many human workers as car plants, US manufacturing job growth would've been robust.

So not only is old manufacturing automated, but growth sectors in manufacturing are also automated. So that "new industries" don't offset automation in "old industries".

(Finally, as an aside, the rhetoric about this hidden fact that everyone ignored is IMO mostly bullshit storytelling. US economic growth in the last 30 years (and especially the last 10 years) was powered by semiconductors and information technology. Also, semiconductors have powered growth in the manufacturing sector. I don't think there is a single economist alive who doesn't know both of these facts, and many of the studies critiqued by the "semiconductors explain everything" crowd explicitly address these two facts...)

We would need another decade of record growth just to offset the losses from 2009. Let alone offset 2008 and all of the loss from 2008-2010 and return to even minuscule net growth over a 2 decade period.

One might think "okay, great, so deliver another decade of growth without a period of recession". Which sounds reasonable until you dig into the reason behind the recent job growth numbers. As the article that you cite points out:

> Baumohl said companies have come to the conclusion that the likely 3% growth the U.S. enjoyed last year was a “sugar high.” With reduced expectations for growth — even with the new incentives to write off depreciation in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — CEOs have concluded it’s better to meet the additional growth opportunities with new workers than pricier machines. “Workers are viewed more like inventory,” he says. “If you need them, you can hire them, and if the economy really turns south, you can let them go. CEO have taken a very realistic approach,” he said.

I.e., if you don't produce sustained growth, employees will be laid off. But if you do produce sustained growth, then incentives shift and capital investments in automation are easier to justified. Either way, and regardless of trade policy, don't expect manufacturing employment growth over the next decade to even offset the 2008-2011 losses, let alone return us to net growth over a 20 year window.

That's how they have been viewed for many hundreds of years now. Nobody will keep you on the payroll if costs more to have you than to not have you. I don't see how this is in any way new.

What is new, however, is that Trump is rejecting the ridiculous notion that we could just let someone else manufacture everything, and actively harasses large manufacturers so they don't take the easy way out and manufacture everything in China. With productivity gains over the last few decades labor cost is not a dominant factor anymore, even though US workers cost more than some sweatshop in China.

I don't get why this is not a bipartisan thing, BTW. Democrats are supposed to be the workers' party, right? Fighting for the downtrodden and stuff? Well, millions of those downtrodden are getting decent jobs now, thanks to Trump alone.